Spatiality and temporality

Here’s an interesting thing:

1. Learning that our spatiality is an illusion need not radically change the pattern of our rational lives.

2. Learning that our temporality is an illusion would necessarily radically change the pattern of our rational lives.

To see that (1) is true, note that finding out that Berkeley’s idealism is true need not radically change our lives. It would change various things in bioethics, but the basic structure of sociality, planning for the future, and the like could still remain.

On the other hand, if our temporality were an illusion, little of what we think of as rational would make sense.

Thus, temporality is more central to our lives than spatiality, important as the latter is. It is no surprise that one of the great works of philosophy is called Being and Time rather than Being and Space.

Curiously, though, even though temporality is more central to our lives than spatiality, temporality is also much more mysterious!